


The Shape You Made Me

by gutrots



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Gen, Gore, HYDRA Trash Party, Human Experimentation, M/M, MCU trash meme, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not Beta Read, Objectification, Steve/bucky is only there if u look close enough, Torture, Unsanitary, Wound Fucking, bucky barnes has a really bad time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutrots/pseuds/gutrots
Summary: ELECTRA: I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.CLYTEMNESTRA: You little animal.





	The Shape You Made Me

These days the asset's world is four blue-green walls and a linoleum floor that smells equally of dead skin and antiseptic.

It is a permanent semi-darkness punctured with an occasional burst of fluorescent light. With dots of red and green glowing and fading, sometimes within the room, sometimes behind its eyelids.

It is a stillness. Timelessness. A piercing silence. The asset had not been connected to instruments which would ensure its continued survival and so it is denied the small comfort of a steady beeping which would somehow measure the passage of time. The asset has long been added to the list of necessary losses, and its oncoming expiration will be a footnote rather than an ending. 

Its world is cold and dreamless. Most of the time it is absent of touch, and yet touch is the only thing confirming that time has not stood completely still. That the wheels and cogs of whatever greater machine it is a part of are still turning. That HYDRA is not done with it just yet.

The asset longs to understand the passage of time in this strange world. The infinite stretches of nothingness interrupted by moments of sudden commotion when everything happens all at once. It longs to make sense of its divided body in this small room with such a heavy gravity. In this unmoving, eternal world, it longs to rest.

 

* * *

 

The mission is a failure. The asset drags itself along the river bank until it reaches the designated extraction point, where STRIKE await to take it back to base. It knows that it had breached mission protocol, and therefore shall be punished adequately. A suspicious, foreign voice in the back of its mind tells it that it was worth it.

It is left to wait in a cell while the punishment is being decided. It shivers, caught between the stench of stale water on its clothing and the wet stain that forms underneath it where it sits in a corner with its knees drawn up to its chest. It is reminded of malnourished dogs outside the Russian base where the soldiers would make it sleep outside.

The door opens, and a man in protective gear enters.

'Get up, you dumb fuck, we're going to medical' he barks, and the asset feels a sudden urge to disobey.

The asset has not sustained any injuries that might warrant medical procedures. It has a substantial number of lacerations of varied depth and length, a dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs, and possible hypothermia. It is fully operational.

It does not need to go to medical. It does not _like_ to go to medical. _It is scared of going to medical_ , its treacherous brain supplies. The thought itself terrifies it. How selfish.

The asset knows that it is stupid. That has been made explicitly clear an extensive number of times. It often has difficulties understanding the world and must be taught over and over again, like a stubborn child. Recently in particular, it has been getting confused. It has been forgetting ( **remembering** ). Oh, and sometimes it drools, too.

The important fact here is that the asset does not know what's best for it. It cannot be trusted with its own flesh, and so it is not for it to decide whether it will go to medical or not. Maybe the doctors will do something about the strange flashes in the back of its brain. The pictures and sounds that the asset is almost certain are of itself. The sudden desire for _freedom._ How entirely, completely wrong.

And so it squashes that primal fear in the back of its mind and follows the handler. It might be stupid, but it is trying its hardest to ignore the nagging voices in a strange, drawling accent that have been growing louder and louder. _Run. Find him. Don't let them hurt him please please oh God please let him be fine._

It doesn’t understand the sudden fear that makes its vision blur and its legs buckle underneath its body. In order to banish the confusing feeling it slams its metal fist into the side of its head, causing the man to turn around and give it a wide-eyed look.

Fear is for animals.

 

* * *

 

'Asset number 0-7-8-3-1, codename Winter Soldier, sir. Permanently decommissioned from active duty. Transfer from STRIKE to Medical effective immediately, sir’ the handler tells a doctor.

They are standing in a small, tiled room, illuminated by the sickly glow of a single light bulb. There is a desk with stacks of files on it and a single chair. A cabinet full of medicines and implements that the asset does not know the purpose of. A gurney with thick leather straps.

An unexpected memory. There was a different number. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. There was a gurney, but this time in a warehouse. Doctors and needles and so much pain being inflicted on the man trapped there.

And there was a rescue.

The memory triggers something inside the asset’s brain which breaks it out of the sudden stream of recollection and back into the present. It lunges forward and closes its metal fingers around the handler’s neck. The man punches the asset in the face, and they both fall to the ground. The doctor is moving frantically in the background, rifling through the contents of the cabinet.

Before the asset can hear the satisfying _snap_ of a broken spine, there’s a sharp pain of a needle being stabbed into its thigh, and the world goes dark.

 

* * *

 

The next time it wakes up the asset find itself in a small, green-blue room. It has been placed on a too-soft mattress with too-clean sheets. Its mechanical arm has been removed.

The asset does not understand what is being done to it. It spends a large portion of its time hooked to a steady drip of an IV. The fluid is most likely a sedative, reminding the asset of the few and far between instances when it tried to disobey its handlers. Maybe that is the punishment. Being subject to a constant reminder that it is not _good_ anymore.

Permanently decommissioned. Useless. Bad. Its expiration date surely draws near.

3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8.

The numbers subconsciously reappear in the back of its brain. Voices grow louder and louder.

This has all happened before. History is a circle, and surely it must be repeating itself now. The feeling of failure. Of having not met expectations. Dread. Defeat. Being caught between resistance and acceptance. A sliver of hope. It all matches up. To what, the asset is not entirely sure.

3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8.

The sedation traps the asset within its flesh. Its flesh-and-bone limbs feel just as heavy as the titanium arm used to. Terrified, it finds out that it cannot move. Not even a finger. Just the rapid left-and-right of eyes inside a slack face. More than ever it feels like a slab of meat. Useless.

Yet its thoughts are now clearer than ever, making it sharply aware that despite the dead weight of its body trapping it in this tiny, dark room, it can still feel pain.

 

* * *

 

3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8.

James Buchanan Barnes wakes up in the middle of the night and _screams._

 

* * *

 

The first few days, nothing of significance happens. The doctors keep the asset locked inside that empty, sterile room, occasionally coming in to observe the effects of various medications on its flesh. Sometimes it is given injections, sometimes substances are added to the IV drip. While it is not experiencing any acute physical discomfort, the asset feels tired.

The asset should not be capable of feeling tired. It should not know what exhaustion feels like. And yet somehow, is feels worse than it would having completed the most demanding of missions. Ones involving countless sleepless nights huddled in a makeshift nest on an ice cold rooftop, tracking every single move of its target. _Sharing body heat in an olive green tent after a long day of marching through foreign woodland_ , something inside his head adds. The thought is unexpectedly comforting. 

The tiredness is making the asset sluggish. It drools and writhes on the bed, unable to settle in the strange softness of the mattress. Due to the weakened state it is finding itself right now, it has been taken off sedation, apparently deemed to no longer pose a threat to medical personnel. Absentmindedly, it runs its fingers through its hair, which has grown significantly since its last maintenance. It is clearly past regulation length now, and the asset wonders if it should request a cut. _James Barnes wants to feel a different set of fingers in his hair_. _Wants to go home and rest. He is tired._

Who is that and why does he say all these things, the asset wonders. Why has this strange companion manifested himself in this ultimate phase of the asset’s existence?

The asset lays its hand back down at its side, noticing that clumps of dark hair have remained stuck to its fingers. They do not come off when it attempts to wipe its hand on the bedding. It repeats the motion, this time tugging slightly, and once again comes up with a handful of greasy, grimy tissue.

The following day there is hair on its pillow and all the way down the sheets. The asset probes at its scalp with tired fingers and discovers bald patches of skin peeking out between what remains of its hair, the remainder of which is hanging brittle and lifeless in front of its face. _James Barnes feels disgusted._ _James Barnes knows that something is horribly wrong._

A few more days pass. The hair is reduced to a few far-between strands still clinging stubbornly to the asset’s scalp. Doctors observe, but never explain what is happening to the asset’s body. It feels tired and hazy, but even then it can understand from their gestures and expressions that everything is going according to plan. It should not worry. _Run run run get out of here,_ James Barnes screams in the background. He seems very worried.

The asset receives hydration through intravenous fluids and nutrition through a nasogastric tube. Its disused mouth tastes foul and feels like it might crack and bleed. In an attempt to alleviate the uncomfortable dryness, it drags its heavy tongue up to the roof of its mouth and along the teeth. There, it notices that a molar has come loose. With ever touch of its tongue the tooth wiggles back and forth. The asset pushes at the tooth with the tip of its tongue, and it easily extracts itself from the gum. Unsure what to do, the asset spits it out on the bed sheets. _James Barnes is terrified._

As soon as the asset has no teeth left, a new series of injections begins.

For the first three days, nothing changes.

Then, a hair that has not been there before clings to the asset’s forehead. Then another one. And another. It must be growing back, and at an unnatural speed. There is constant pressure on its scalp and microscopic lacerations appear when fully formed tissue springs up from underneath the skin. The hair that grows back is more sparse and brittle than the asset remembers its own hair being, but it will suffice.

Soon after, the asset’s gums become inflamed and begin to hurt until one day the taste of iron floods its parched mouth and a shard of bone breaks through skin. A tooth. Then another, and another. They grow small and deformed, with significant gaps in between. Not all develop fully, but the ones that do are short and blunt, protruding from the flesh at incorrect angles. There is no difference in shape between the molars and canines and incisors. Their yellowish colour is punctuated by spots of decay and cavity, either present as soon as they break through the gum or developing shortly after. Some fall out, just to be replaced by new ones moments later. The cycle repeats until the asset’s mouth looks like a crumbling, ancient burial ground littered with crooked gravestones.

Yet this less-than-ideal result does not seem to bother the doctors. Quite the opposite, actually. They are taking more interest in the asset now, cutting off pieces of its regrown hair and stuffing latex-covered fingers into its mouth. They poke and prod at its sore gums, examining the spaces between its new teeth. They extract one and put it in a glass container with an orange lid. Blood flows freely from the hole, covering up the constant stench of decay filling its mouth. _James Barnes wants to bite._

The asset lies still and allows the doctors to proceed. Brittle and shapeless as they might be, it is happy to have its teeth back. The doctors seem pleased too, exchanging excited words and broad smiles. The asset is happy to have proven useful. Even though it did not actively participate in the experiment, it is overjoyed that the results are correct. Perhaps its fear of being placed in medical was unfounded. Despite the lingering sadness that it might never return to active combat duty, the asset is glad to have proven that despite a number of missteps, it can still be _good_.

The following day, a bone saw is brought into the room, and the asset finds itself missing its right leg.

It does not grow back like the hair and the teeth.

The doctors are furious.

  

* * *

 

More experiments follow.

The asset is given toxins and antidotes, its organs rearranged or removed entirely. Bones are broken, skin is ruptured. It is taken by surprise when electroshock is employed, though this time not as means of enhancing its programming.

With every single day, James Buchanan Barnes grows louder. Each cut of a scalpel is met with a scream. Every injection with a sudden urge to flinch. The voice in the back of the asset’s brain encourages it to give an experimental tug to the leather straps binding it to the bed. To spit in the face of the doctor administering sedatives. To the asset’s horror, when the man responds by hitting it with an aluminium tray used to store surgical tools and makes a few of its new teeth come loose, it replies with a bloodied, shit-eating grin.

The asset is pliant. James Barnes though, _Bucky_ , he is rebellious. Triumphant. Often miserable, left to wonder what will become of him. If he will be left here to rot when there is nothing else to be done to his body. When he cannot withstand more pain. Mostly though, he wants to fight. He wants to taste blood on his tongue like a malnourished dog fed up with its owner. The asset banishes these thoughts by reminding itself that it is being _good_.

3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8.

History repeats itself.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, when the asset is locked inside its body, STRIKE and other non-medical personnel visit its room.

They come in twos and threes, and all they do is poke and prod and put things inside the asset. Just like they used to back when it was fully operational.

Back then thought, there used to be an aura of excitement around these kind of activities. The men would drink beer and laugh, pass the asset between each other as they celebrated a successful mission. Commander Rumlow would remark that such nights were good for team morale. The asset was _good_.

Now there's a certain secrecy to the acts. The touches are brief, and any evidence is thoroughly removed. More often than not, the men wear gloves. Even though the asset does not understand entirely what disgust it, it listen to Bucky when he tells it that it is disgusting. _Out of all the things done to him, this is the worst. Bucky wants to recoil from the invading fingers. Wants to get up and fight. He can’t he can’t he **has** to. He feels absolutely vile._

This time, two men visit when all the doctors have left. The asset recognizes one of the faces, but the other one is new. Its memory functions much better these days, now that electroshock is no longer used to improve its performance in the field. They are standing at the foot of its bed, looking vaguely amused and talking in hushed voices until one of them pulls a small tin out of his pocket and presses it into the other’s hand.

The man approaches the bed from the side and pulls the asset by its remaining ankle so that it is positioned diagonally across the mattress. _Bucky wants to scream, to tell him to get his filthy hands away from him. Tell him that there’s only one person permitted to touch him this way, and it sure as hell ain’t some goddamn HYDRA goon._ The asset remains silent. The man pulls up the bedsheet covering the asset’s lower body, bunching it up around its waist. He then unzips his trousers, coats his hand in the clear substance procured from the tin, gives a few quick strokes to his genitals, and pushes in.

These days, the asset is not capable of expressing pain. That does not mean that James Barnes does not feel any.

This particular type of _hurt_ never feels familiar. Every single time, the intrusion feels worse than any procedure performed by the doctors. Wounds reopen and trauma registers anew. _Bucky will never get used to how wrong it feels._ The asset’s lower body might as well be on fire with how much the intrusion burns at its insides. Like it is being split apart with blunt force trauma. If it focuses on the sensation, it can feel where it is bleeding and tearing. Both the asset and James Barnes want to cry and thrash and escape this immeasurable pain. Neither can.

'Tight as fuck in there. Drier than the goddamn desert though. Feels like I'm fucking a roll of sandpaper. How the fuck do you manage to get off on this?', the man with his genitals inside the asset says in-between short grunts.

'I told you, gotta use the other hole.'

'What _other hole_? Don't see any other hole. Not like its mouth is gonna be any wetter. And the teeth creep me out.'

'Yeah, they’re nasty. I’m not talking about the mouth though.'

'Then what the fuck are you talking about? Don't see no cunt anywhere near. Would take a whole different level of psycho to sew one on it', the man laughs briefly, giving a few unsatisfactory thrusts. 'You’re so full of shit', he adds.

'Speaking of which.'

The other HYDRA operative pulls off the bed sheet from around the asset’s stomach and drops it to the floor, exposing the asset completely.

'What the actual fuck is that? Is that a fucking prolapsed asshole right fucking there?', the unfamiliar man remarks, sounding disgusted.

'It’s a stoma, you goddamn idiot. Makes the nurses’ job a whole lot easier.'

'Does it shit from there?'

'Not like that has stopped you before.'

'Fair point. They must be feeding it through a tube, so not like there's gonna be. _Chunks_.'

'Exactly. Now get in there.'

The man stops thrusting. He removes his genitals from within the asset’s body and moves further up the bedside.

'This is _so_ fucked up' he says, smiling, as he shoves into the bright red hole in the asset’s stomach.

The pain is like nothing Bucky has ever felt before. It’s nothing like what the asset has had to endure in the course of its service either. The man is shoving at internal organs, both the asset’s own and the foreign ones put inside it by doctors. It feels like being eviscerated from the inside out. _Like there are invisible knives stabbing at his insides. Like he is prey being gutted in preparation for a feast._ The rhythmic motion of the thrusts feels like it’s going to push the asset’s organs outside through Bucky’s mouth. Like all of its ( _his_ ) guts are going to come spilling out whichever way possible.

Fear is for animals, the asset tries to remind itself.

_Bucky Barnes is so fucking scared._

_He wants to push the man off._ The asset is supposed to be useful. It is not supposed to be feel fear. But James Barnes is telling it _to bite and claw, to howl in pain. To put an end to this fucked up spectacle._ Trapped inside its body as it is, the asset stays silent.

The pain does not relent, but finally the man is done. He pulls out of the asset’s stomach with an obscene squelch and a satisfied smile.

'Well, that was disgusting. Let's do it again sometime' he says.

'You got it, buddy' his companion answers, putting out the cigarette he's started smoking somewhere in the meantime on the asset’s thigh.

_For James Barnes, the shame burns more than the wound._

 

* * *

 

That night, something awakens within the asset. 

3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8. 3-2-5-5-7-0-3-8.

James Buchanan Barnes is not a voice inside its head. He’s not a secret urge telling the asset to disobey its handlers conceived out of prolonged exposure to pain. He is not a foreign presence that has made itself at home between the folds of the asset’s ruined brain. He is not another late stage cancer.

The asset _is_ Bucky Barnes. One and the same.

The hints, the sensations. Bits and pieces not unlike his fragmented flesh. It all makes sense now. He has been used like this before. By Arnim Zola, in a lab in a warehouse on the Western Front. He was rescued by Steve Rogers. He survived. 

He will survive this too.

 

* * *

 

This newfound revelation complicates things for the medical team. The doses of sedatives increase, and the moments where he has any control over his flesh are almost non-existent.

His mind, on the other hand, functions better than ever. Triggered by the realisation that he has already endured similar treatment once, he uncovers bits and pieces of his past every single day. At first, this newfound liberty is empowering. No matter the damage to his body, he feels more human than ever. His quiet defiance grows and grows.

 

* * *

 

STRIKE cease their visits after doctors give the asset a series of injections that makes Bucky’s skin crawl with pain.

At first that is all there is. An overwhelming, itching sensation. Almost like a fever, but contained to the very surface of his flesh. He has to remain permanently sedated so that he does not attempt to escape or scratch his skin open. A few days later, first signs of disease begin to appear.

It starts with a rash which quickly sprouts small, off-white pustules. Their raised texture glistens when doctors switch on the too bright lights to observe the progress of the experiment. For some reason, everyone who touches him nowadays wears a hazmat suit.

As time passes the pustules begin to grow into blisters which burst open on their own volition, making Bucky want to crawl out of his own skin, just to distance himself from the gory mess of the viscera. The asset never thought about itself in terms of aesthetic appeal, but the tacky substance leaking from the sores makes Bucky want to recoil from his own flesh. _Filth teaches filth,_ and they made him in their own image.

Patches of inflamed skin bubble and break, turning from red to white to grey in a matter of days. The smell of rot is overwhelming, no matter how much antiseptic the cleaning crew use to scrub down the room. (It does not help that he is not washed either. He knows from experience that this is what happens to bodies which become living evidence. They mustn’t be touched. Tampered with.) The sickly stench lingers at the back of his throat, making him want to retch despite the various tubes descending down his oesophagus, blocking any possible path for the vomit to rise.

When the majority of afflicted surfaces have turned grey, the skin detaches. In silent horror he observes as pieces of ruined dermis swell, burst, and slide off, revealing decaying muscle underneath. Rot follows the wetness across his torso and down the one remaining arm, taking two of his fingers in its course.

Before the entire limb has to be amputated, the asset is given another series of injections.

To his bewilderment, the destroyed skin begins to slowly but surely knit itself back together almost immediately. The process is somehow more painful than the decay, and patches of dead skin which have not fallen off due to infection need to be removed surgically. The new skin is shiny and pink, riddled with tiny scars which allow doctors to trace the exact course of reconstruction. Notably, it is also completely hairless, appearing almost comical in the company of his old, withered flesh where dark, coarse body hair has begun to grow due to the lack of asset maintenance. The colour of the newly formed skin does not match the yellow-green-grey shade of the rest of the asset’s body either, but no one seems to be too bothered by the fact. In fact, once again, the doctors are pleased.

Bucky, on the other hand, is not complicit in their joy. The asset was grateful for its hair and teeth to have grown back. It was glad to have helped the doctors make an important scientific discovery. To prove how good it was. How useful.

 _Bullshit._ Bucky is full of rage. He is not a toy, to be destroyed and reassembled by doctors like rowdy children fearing their mother’s wrath. He is not a weapon, or an asset, or a living experiment in human endurance. He is not theirs to be remade in their image.

 

* * *

 

More experiments follow. 

James Barnes watches in horror as he is cut open and his organs are removed and replaced with new ones brought into the room in jars full of viscous substance. As mechanical and electronic devices are put inside his body, and a faint electric current echoes the asset’s worst nightmares.

His body becomes a tapestry of scars and stitches, like the reverse side of an embroidered handkerchief. His flesh is a testimony - a microcosm of HYDRA's scientific progress. The world in miniature, with scars on his skin mirroring the ones HYDRA left on history. Manipulated stem cells. Deadly viruses. His insides are a scrapbook of success and failure, of evolution. _A crime scene._

His hair and teeth refuse to improve following their emergence from the skin, both brittle and crumbling. His right eye has been replaced with a cybernetic one, which often malfunctions, showing him the universe of his prison in glitches and flickers of static. Breathing is harder than it used to be, with the damage sustained in the trial run for the newly developed nerve agent. He is often plagued by fits of uncontrollable seizures, an unexpected result of research on new viral diseases. He has to wear a catheter so that he does not rot in his own filth. There are wounds on his abdomen from stomas and surgeries, and he has the dubious honour of thanking his captors for a new liver and pancreas, and the loss of one kidney. The new skin which grew back after the experiment in biological weapons turned into scar tissue, leaving patches of him leathery to the touch. He cannot begin to count the scabs and lacerations that ensue where the bacteria has not removed itself completely from his body and decides to attack anew. He is still two fingers and a leg short.

Some of the wounds heal, some don’t. Every single one brings back memories. Scalpels and injections and cold, clinical hands trigger muscle memory that has not been erased with electroshock. He remembers the facility in the Alps. Remembers Arnim Zola. Remembers Steve and the rescue and _oh how fucking stupid he was to leave him there at the banks of the Potomac._ To willingly come back to this hell.

Whenever he is not fully sedated, he tries to break free. To kick and scream and lash out. His memory still lapses sometimes. More often than not, the asset’s body will refuse to comply. It will lie still and accept whatever is being done to it, hoping to prove its usefulness and come back into HYDRA’s good graces.

 _Like HYDRA has any good goddamn grace_ , Bucky remarks to himself.

 

* * *

 

His world is silent.

Until one day, it is not. A doctor is standing by his bedside, adding the daily dose of sedatives to an IV bag. Then, an echo of gunshot pierces the air.

The man turns around, startled, and runs out of the room. More gunshot follows. And then, the only sound he could ever hope for which would signal an end to his torment. A familiar voice with a Brooklyn drawl, shouting orders to his brothers in arms. This is it, that’s his only chance.

With whatever strength is left in him, Bucky pulls out the IV out of his arm. He grabs the plastic tube with his malformed teeth and yanks until the needle is removed from underneath skin, leaving behind a steady trickle of blood. A half-rotten tooth falls out in the process. Unceremoniously, he spits it out on the floor.

(Whenever he was left lucid enough to have any consistent thought, Bucky would wonder if he actually wanted to be rescued. He knows that this is not the Alps. That back then the damage was all on the inside. Now his body is ruined. Wrecked. Disgusting. He is not sure if he actually resembles anything human. He has not seen himself in a mirror in a very long time. Maybe all that the looks like is a bag of badly butchered meat left to sit outside for a couple days too long. That’s probably it. It is unlikely that Steve will want him back now that he is rotting both on the outside and the inside.)

Even before HYDRA, when he was still a sniper in the 107th, he used to feel deadly. Now he feels mostly dead.

He longs to feel lethal again. To be James Buchanan Barnes, handsome and smart and the best goddamn shot in the whole fucking regiment. To fight and kill and make it back home to his lover, as he was always supposed to, the damage to his flesh be damned.

He sits up as straight as he can manage. Calculates the distance. Too far from the door to make it on one leg, with nothing in the way to support himself with. Resolutely, he rolls over and tumbles off the bed, rupturing the stitches on the stump of his leg as he hits the ground. The wound refused to heal properly and now a warm, wet stream of blood mixed with pus gushes out onto the floor from in between tattered strips of skin and the pain is immeasurable.

With grim determination, he crawls forward.

**Author's Note:**

> For an infinitely better take on violence, insanity and history repeating itself, go read Sophocles' Electra (translated by Anne Carson).


End file.
